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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25297528">Blue Shadows</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Blonde_and_the_Brunette/pseuds/The_Blonde_and_the_Brunette'>The_Blonde_and_the_Brunette</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Red Dead Imagines [9]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Drunken Kiss, F/M, Gender Neutral, M/M, Poetic, Reader is drunk, blue shadows, idk what this is, waxing poetically about Arthur Morgan</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 11:29:18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,361</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25297528</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Blonde_and_the_Brunette/pseuds/The_Blonde_and_the_Brunette</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>There's no good was to summarise this. Reader is drunk, doesn't remember anything they did, Arthur reminds them in his oh so helpful way. Gender Neutral</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Arthur Morgan/Reader</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Red Dead Imagines [9]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1374496</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>57</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Blue Shadows</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">There’s something unspoken that lives in the twilight of a new night, when all the world’s blue and grey, soft around the edges. Details are smothered, smoothed, the full moon paints everything it touches in a stark, unforgiving light as it chases away the last warm, round tone of orange from the sunset. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">There was something there, some poetry that lurked and daintily padded at the edge of night, but for some reason the words wouldn’t come. You watched them slip slowly out the imagined plane of your mind’s eye, felt them drip down steadily to the beat of your own blood as it flowed through your veins, your thoughts fuzzy and incoherent as they tumbled down in a hopeless chase.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“You still with me, genius?”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">The poetry was gone, shattered, shaken from your mind with all the grace of a slap to the face as Arthur’s voice cut through your daydreaming. Your head lolled on his shoulder as he turned his head to inspect the damage, and you could only blink blearily up at him, those words of poetry now a jumbled heap of a mess on the floor of your mind thanks to his growling, bristly, barely leased rage of a snarl.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">You don’t answer, can’t, caught in a circle as your mental self tries unsuccessfully to stop the barrage of words that somehow transformed from melancholy and nostalgic versus about the twilight of the world to a homage to the face peering sullenly back at you, eyes full of worry, frustration pulling at his skin, the stern line of his mouth dipping as he twisted further to catch your own muddled gaze.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Arthur was made to be an outlaw, the thought came unbidden. Shaped, moulded, downright hammered into the outline of a man that had become a deadly force to be reckoned with. There was a disconnect, between the image of Arthur as you came to know him around camp and in quiet trips, and the stranger that inhabited the space underneath his skin, who roared out in fiery fumes at the first sign of provocation. That Arthur, Dutch’s Right Hand, was sorely at odds with the grumpy man you were plastered to, even if the slight edge to his voice was a shadow of what lies beneath.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">However, that Arthur was hidden, and the one you leaned against now was quite tame by comparison, malleable even with his surly, grumpy temper.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“You keep your eyes open, if you know what’s good for you.” The shoulder you were splayed against rolled, rippled, and you followed the twitch of muscle as it worked its way to his spine and felt it plainly through your own chest as he moved, turned back to the trail that cut a vivid line through the prairie in the moonlight. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">The slow gait of the horse was lilting, gentle, each shift of the spine under you rocking you both back and forth in a sway, and you hummed, unthinking, caught in that trail of thought as you relaxed further against him. You sagged, swayed further, and suddenly Arthur was cursing as he tried to catch you.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">He managed it, barely, your limbs limp and unhelping as he grabbed your waist and hauled you through the air. You had a brief, confused revelation that somehow your head was in his armpit and that sideways, the landscape looked even more alien, before he was shouldering you, pushing and rearranging until your chin found the curve of his shoulder and your nose tickled the sunburnt skin of his neck.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">He tensed, curled his ear down, and you felt the shiver that racked him.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“<em>Jesus</em>, you feel like ice.” </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">It was hissed above you, and he shifted, and in turn you sagged, and somewhere in your mind you distantly realized he had pulled you into his lap to avoid losing you, and you were now straddled across him, the saddle horn digging painfully into your back.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">This… was not quite as poetic as riding behind him, you surmised, your eyebrows lowering into a muddled arc as the realization came to you. The sullen thought was quickly banished with Arthur’s deep inhale, and his chest rose and fell underneath your own, your ribs touching briefly in the exchange.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">You continued on, thoughts spiraling with every inhale and press of limb on limb, certain that you had died and gone to heaven, until his drawl brought you back, and belatedly you realized you must have missed something.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“You really scared me, you know.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">It was softer, not the cutting whip of before, and you frowned, unable to connect the dots, almost letting the train of thought flutter away for the more favorable pastime of silently running your fingers across the planes of his lower back.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Should know better ’n followin someone outside a saloon, ‘pecially drunk as you are.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Oh, well that was stupid.Did you do that? You frowned again, clenched and unclenched your fingers, felt the pucker of your lips brush the skin at the crook of Arthur’s neck, and almost missed what he said next in stupefied silence as your brain rebooted at the sensation.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Though, next time you take a swing at me, I’m liable to swing back.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Well…. that…. that <em>was </em>stupid. That definitely didn’t sound like something you would do at all, Arthur was built like a brick shit house, surely there wasn’t enough alcohol in the world to make you think you could-</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Though, the apology kiss weren’t so bad.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Oh god, and he sounded positively gleeful as though he knew your face was turning redder than a ripe tomato. You’d never survive if he found out about the crush you’d been harboring for literal <em>years</em>. There was no way, please god in heaven don’t let it be true. Your hands tightened in the back of his shirt, balled into fists, fair ripped the material at his next words.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Might even be up for it ‘gain, if you can keep from pukin on me anymore.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Jesus H Christ, and your eyes fluttered open, staring up at the moon like a lovesick calf. You probably would have kept looking, drove yourself moon blind, if a rough grip of leather hadn’t fastened itself to the back of your head and pulled, trying to dislodge you from your comfy position.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">You fought the grip, dug in to the muscle of his back and locked down your arms, but this was Arthur Morgan, and he easily pried you away, blue eyes fair laughing down at your expression as though he could see your embarrassment even through the strange light of the moon.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Nothing? Ain’t gonna talk purty like before?” You strangled the abrupt noise of disbelief that rose in your throat, saw the smile at the edge of his mouth when you failed to control the muscles of your face, and lord above, you almost begged him for mercy.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">In a way, he gave it to you, though it took you several long heartbeats to realize it was his lips you were tasting, chapped but firm as he licked into your open mouth. The noise you made was not poetic at all, not fit for something as grand as kissing Arthur Morgan, but he ate it anyway, took it within his mouth and stored it underneath his tongue while he hunted for more.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">When he finally let you breath again, slightly shaking you with the arm he had at some point wrapped fully around your waist to make sure you were, in fact, still breathing, you gasped out loud, stared up at him like a fish landed out of water.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“You ok, princess?”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">It would have been mocking another time, another place, but here, straddled face to face on the back of his horse in this strange world bathed by the moon, it meant something different. You felt it wind into your heart, settle in the space under your sternum, and you nodded, a grin striking you from ear to ear.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Hands rose, curled around his face, and you kissed him again, tasting the blue shadows of the moon on his lips, finding your poetry after all.</span>
</p>
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